Progress. Small, but progress.

I curl up in his arms while my meat cooks, and he strokes my hair and runs his claws up and down my arm, making a contented rumble in his chest. This? This is not so bad. This is actually kind of delicious—I have a hot guy, lots of food, and an awesome new room. I don’t have to worry about where I’m sleeping, if there’s enough food to last the week, or if someone’s going to break in and try to jack our stuff. My biggest worry is whether or not I can ever get Kael to wear pants, and if I even want him to, because he’s warm and snuggly with all this hot, bare skin against me. I’m getting kind of used to his nakedness, just like I’m getting used to his possessive, savage nature.

I’m…happy. For the moment. I know this won’t last. I know none of this can last. There’s still Amy and Sasha to worry over, and the future. There’s biting and sex. There’s Fort Dallas and what to do if they never let me back. There are a million things niggling at me.

But for tonight, I’m just going to enjoy the scent of my roasting meat, snuggling in the lap of my guy, and later, I’m going to sleep on my awesome new bed.

When my stomach is full of roasted meat, I lean back against Kael’s big, broad chest and lick my fingers. “We’re going to have to hunt down a spice rack,” I tell him. “And maybe a garden somewhere.”

Whatever you wish. He rubs his nose along the shell of my ear.

“I knew you’d say that.”

Because you know I would do anything for you.

I smile, because it’s true. It’s weird to feel so oddly…happy after being exiled from Fort Dallas and the only life I know. I feel a little guilty that my stomach’s full, my surroundings are luxurious (compared to the old broken school bus I’ve lived in for the past five years), and I’ve had really great orgasms several times this afternoon.

It’s growing harder to find fault with being Kael’s mate.

Everything I’ve ever known has taught me that dragons are the enemy. They murder and destroy. Millions—no, billions have died to dragon attacks. But the one holding me in his arms right now is nipping at my ear playfully and takes care of me better than I could ever imagine. He’s sweet to be around, and I like his sense of humor. I keep mentally trying to prepare myself for what’s going to happen when life gets back to normal. When I return to my sister and he goes back to the skies.

Because this can’t work. Dragon and human can’t be happy together, just like a shark and a seal. One’s a predator and the other one’s a snack. Something will happen, and this house of cards will come tumbling down.

Every time I think about that, though, the ache in my breast grows a little bit sharper.

I can’t be falling in love with a dragon. I just can’t.

25

CLAUDIA

I stand in a dark cell, the same jail cell that I’d been held in for over a week, all for snatching a few things from the Scavenge Lands and getting caught. It’s a bullshit sentence, made all the more bullshit by the fact that I’m the only one in the jail. I sit, waiting, but no one comes to get me. My irritation grows, and I pace my cell. Somewhere in the distance, Amy is sobbing as if her heart would break. The sound makes me frantic, and I continue pacing, waiting to be let out.

But no one comes. No one ever comes. All the while, Amy’s tears escalate, until there’s nothing I can hear except my sister’s misery.

I storm to the metal door and bang on it. “Let me out!” I scream. “This is a mistake!”

“No mistake,” someone calls back to me.

“But my sister! She’s crying!” I pound on the door again.

“Don’t you worry about her anymore,” the guard calls from a distance. “She’s ours. You gave her up.”

“No! I want her!”

“Then you should have thought of that before you fucked the dragon.” The voice is hard, cruel. Familiar. The captain of the militia? I try to peer out the door of the jail cell, but the small window is foggy. I can’t see anything but a vague outline of a man.

“You can’t hold me here. My sister needs me!”

“She doesn’t need you. You’ve chosen who you want to be with, and it’s not humans.” The voice is full of scorn.

“He’s not like the others!”

“Isn’t he? Isn’t he exactly like the others?”

And I can’t deny it, because he is. Just because he’s my dragon doesn’t mean he’s not a murderer. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, traitor,” he tells me. “You could choose to help your people, and instead you’re running off with a dragon.”

“No,” I tell him, running my hands over the walls of my cell. “I don’t love the dragon,” I lie. “I’m with the humans. Let me see my sister.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m here!” I yell louder. “I’m here in the Fort with you, and I want to see my sister.”

“No, you’re not,” the man says, and his voice seems to change, turn deeper. It comes from all around me, and the walls of my jail cell smooth out. I fall backward, only to realize that the walls have turned golden. And warm. And they’re moving.

I’m no longer in the jail cell. I’m in the belly of the dragon. My dragon.

He’ll let me out, though. I pound on the wall with a flat hand. “Kael! Let me out!”

You said you didn’t love me, the dragon rumbles all around me. That you have no choice. You care nothing for me.

That’s not true, I tell him. I love you. But I love my sister, too. Please, please help me rescue her.

You have to choose.

“Choose?”

Choose me, or choose Amy. You cannot have us both.

Amy’s sobbing grows louder, even through the walls of the dragon’s stomach. I can’t choose. I don’t know how to get to my sister. I don’t know how to get out of the dragon’s stomach. “I can’t choose! Why are you making me?”

I am a murderer, like you said. I have killed thousands of people and flamed all of Old Dallas. I cannot live with people. You must choose them, or you must choose me.

“I don’t know if I can.”